The Use of Decision Support in Search and Rescue: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Whenever natural and human-made disasters strike, proper responses of the concerned authorities often rely on search and rescue services. Search and rescue services are complex, multidisciplinary processes that involve several degrees of interdependent assignments. To handle such complexity, decision support systems are used for decision-making and execution of plans within search and rescue operations. Advancements in data management solutions and artificial intelligence technologies have provided better opportunities to make more efficient and effective decisions that can lead to improved search and rescue operations. This paper provides findings from a bibliometric mapping and a systematic literature review that were performed to (1) identify existing search and rescue processes that use decision support systems, data management solutions, and artificial intelligence technologies, (2) perform a comprehensive analysis of existing solutions in terms of their research contributions to the investigated domain, and (3) investigate the potential for knowledge transfer between application areas. The main finding is that non-conventional data management solutions are commonly used in land rescue operations, and geographical information systems are integrated with various machine learning for land rescue. However, there is a gap in research on search and rescue decision support at sea, thus motivating further studies within this specific application area.